Air Force Study: ‘Sycophants’ Botching Probes
The Air Force has a poor record of flight safety and accident investigations because of officers seeking to please superiors, hide culpability and avoid embarrassment, Time magazine reports.
A confidential report by Alan Diehl, the Air Force’s former top civilian safety official, to Defense Secretary William Perry documents 30 cases of botched probes by “incompetents, charlatans and sycophants,” according to Time, which obtained the report last week.
And the 30 cases are just the “tip of the iceberg,” Diehl wrote.
The rate of major Air Force mishaps has increased by more than 30 percent “while the Navy and Army rates have decreased by 40 percent and 50 percent” over the last three years, Diehl wrote.
One case chronicled in Diehl’s report involves the fatal crash of a B-52 bomber at Fairchild Air Force Base last year.
The pilot, Lt. Col. Arthur “Bud” Holland, had a reputation as a “hot stick,” yet his superiors put him in charge of evaluating all B-52 pilots at the base.
Holland once buzzed one of his daughter’s high school softball games. On another flight, a co-pilot complained he had had to wrestle control from Holland, who barely had cleared a ridge line during a run three months before his fatal flight.
Yet, Holland’s superiors put him in charge of evaluating B-52 pilots.
In connection with that crash, the former operations commander of Fairchild’s 92nd Bomb Wing pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of dereliction of duty. Col. William Pellerin will be sentenced today.
Other incidents in the report, according to Time’s May 29 issue:
Last fall, a pair of B-52s “narrowly missed colliding” with an airliner, an incident apparently “hushed up.”
During the Persian Gulf War, an F-15 fighter feigned an attack on an F-111 warplane “without warning them.” “The inexperienced pilot, apparently thinking he was under attack, crashed while taking evasive action.” The crash was listed as a “combat loss.”
Last year, a C-130 cargo plane collided with an F-16 fighter jet over Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, killing 24 people. The socalled “composite-wing policy,” which grouped perhaps incompatible planes at the same base, wasn’t evaluated by investigators. It was the brainstorm of Gen. Merrill McPeak, the service’s top officer before he retired last fall.
“Other investigators felt this issue was at the crux of the accident but dared not bring it up again,” Diehl wrote. An air traffic controller was blamed, and the pilots involved resumed flying.
The Pentagon inspector general is investigating Diehl’s allegations, but the Air Force told Time the current system “has served the Air Force well for many years.”